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To Make Forcemeat for an Artificial Turtle

A forcemeat mixture of veal, anchovies, spices, and wine used for an artificial turtle stew.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,979 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

To Make Forcemeat for an Artificial Turtle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the balls

  1. Beat the fat and lean veal with the anchovies in a marble mortar until well combined.

  2. Season the mixture with mace, Chyan, coarse sea salt, parsley, sweet marjoram, lemon juice, and Madeira wine.

  3. Form the mixture into small balls and dust them lightly with flour.

Stew and serve

  1. Add the balls to your dish and stew for about 30 minutes before serving.

  2. Boil the green skin of a salmon's head and stew it with the rest of the ingredients for added flavor.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Marjoram + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together957 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Marjoram + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,265 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mace + marjoramtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together767 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Veal fat
Adds richness and moisture so the balls stay tender during stewing.
Lean veal
Provides the main meaty body and structure of the balls.
Anchovies
Contributes savory depth that rounds out the flavor of the veal.
Madeira wine
Adds sweetness and aroma to the seasoned mixture.

The step that matters

Forming and dusting the balls. Mixing the meat until well combined and dusting the balls lightly with flour helps them hold their shape and gives a slightly thickened surface, so they do not break apart in the stew.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, parsley, marjoram, lemon, madeira wine, flour):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, parsley, marjoram, lemon, madeira wine, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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